Exactly one year ago today, we ate Compari’s. It was Mina’s first day of Kindergarten and we let her pick the restaurant. She picked Compari’s because they have coloring on the tables and she loves their food. We loved their food, too. Note that I wrote LOVED. Read the rest of this entry »

The Experience

Logan’s Roadhouse opened a new location in Rockwall earlier this month. We had been to the location in Sherman with my inlaws and had a nice time, so we were eager to try the Rockwall location. We first went for lunch on Sunday, but the busy church crowd made us shy away. So, we returned for an early dinner on Sunday evening. Read the rest of this entry »

The experience

Can you believe it??! Tonight is our last night of the Phipps Feeding Fiasco! Our 365th restaurant in 365 days. We’ve been looking forward to this date for quite some time. We decided a few weeks ago that we would have this dinner at Stephan Pyles. We know they have excellent food, excellent service in a beautiful restaurant. What would happen if we brought the kid factor in?? And not only that, I decided to invite our good friend and her 9 month old to join us as well. The more the merrier, right?!

The experience

Today is Mina’s afternoon to spend with her grandparents and it’s always a conundrum as to eating with or without her. At 5 o’clock, Benji started foraging for food in the kitchen requesting bagels, so i alerted Papa and said we’d better get going. Luckily, Benji, my little food connoisseur was ready to go when he heard we were going to have sushi and immediately asked for “Chicken Ah-geh” (Chicken Kare Age). I put him in the car and as I started to get myself settled, Benji reminded me to get his sushi (his sushi toy). Ogre was just coming out of the house, so I sent him back in. We were finally ready to head to Simon’s Sushi, a restaurant recommended to us by a reader and very close to home. Read the rest of this entry »

The experience

We’re getting down to the nitty gritty, just a few short days and we’ll have eaten at 365 different restaurants over the last 365 days. There are a couple of places that we’ve had recommended to us that we want to squeeze in, one of them being a Chinese Joint in Dallas. We’ve never even heard of this place, and as you know, we like a good Chinese joint any day! So we made the cross-metroplex journey to Howard Wang’s China Grill. Read the rest of this entry »

The experience

Dr. Mom would be working this evening so it would be up to me to take Mina to Hula class in Garland with Benji in tow. I got off a to a start at my regular time only to find lines of cars on my usual route. I took a few ill-advised shortcuts and ended up lost somewhere in Garland. Took me a good 10 minutes to get back on track. I nearly decided to turn around and give up; figuring we’d end up at her class right before it ended. I managed to make it only 15 minutes late. When I arrived, the teacher was just telling everyone how class would end early today. Great…

The experience

I had the afternoon off today and we’ve been wanting to take the kids to Fort Worth. One of our favorite places to go is the Japanese Gardens at the Fort Worth Arboretum. We were actually up and going early enough to head out there. Of course, a trip to Fort Worth typically means a trip to one of Ogre’s childhood faves, The Original. So before we could go to the Gardens, we had to have lunch at the Original. When you walk up they really taut themselves… “The Best Tex Mexon the Planet”!

We were seated right away and decided to put Benji in a high chair straight away. He was not super thrilled about this, but did not complain. We ordered drinks and Benji was very excited to get a big boy cup. Mom, not so thrilled, but no accidents with his cup and he kept his hands out of his glass for the most part.

Ogre ordered some queso and reminisced about this was his “first” favorite queso. Turned out we didn’t need that order of queso as EVERY dish we ordered came with queso. Apparently, they are pretty proud of their queso also!

Mina was still badgering us about where we were going; we try to get her to enjoy the journey…she never does. We kept on with just saying we were having lunch.

She brought some toys in from the car and made me take pictures of her slinky nose.

After we ordered lunch, we also requested some tortillas. Ogre buttered a tortilla for Benji. That was a messy mistake. As you may know from previous posts, Benji enjoys making “tortilla faces.” Tortilla faces that he likes to lay across his face. End result:

Our lunch came out pretty quickly and we wiped down Benji. I was not so pleased with my lunch as it was DROWNING in queso (and I like queso). Ogre was not pleased that I was complaining about lunch. He made it clear that divorce proceedings might be order if I rated this restaurant too low. Somehow, it was MY fault for ordering the “wrong” dish. He only got an eyebrow raise in response.

The kids were super excited about their lunch…dinosaur nuggets. They enjoyed biting their heads off and dipping it in ketchup. They also enjoyed squeezing their own ketchup on to their plates, which was almost a disaster also.

I trudged through my lunch and we waited on Benji, who kept claiming he was not done with lunch. I finally had to tell them that we were going to see the fishies to get him to speed it up. Mina’s ears perked up and was ready to go after that! So off we headed to feed the fishies at the Japanese Gardens.

The food

Tex Mex.

Queso is very good…it’s creamy and doesn’ taste like fake cheese. with eggs and a few tomatoes. There were not very hunks of eggs, and it all kind of ran together. I kept telling Ogre it was like eating slop. He said it tasted great! Really?

Ogre ordered the Roosevelt, this is apparently what Roosevelt ordered when he ate here, I’m not sure that is really true, but Ogre says it is. Anyway, he liked it a lot. Loved it, I should say. Gave it 5 stars.

I ordered a breakfast item…it was called “Egg, Cheese, and Tomatoes.” Pretty simple, right? And by the way, that’s all it is, it does not come with rice or beans (I ordered a side of rice). There are other breakfast items that clearly say that it is covered in queso. I think of cheese as grated cheese and queso, as well, saucy. Makes sense? I got a lake of queso

The kids had dinosaur chicken nuggets, which they loved and it came with fries.

The service

Average at best. It was nice that the other waitresses came by to check on us, particularly since ours was often nowhere to be found. It was a chore to get them to refill the drinks, but the food comes out very quickly.

The kids

No kids activities, but they do have kids menu items. It’s casual and laid back and very family friendly otherwise.

Well, we’ll obviously be coming back here when we head to Fort Worth in the cultural arts district, but I won’t be ordering my dish again! I’m going to rate this with 3 stars, I wonder if Ogre will change it, he thought it should get 4 stars.

The experience

Today is extremely busy for us. Started early with hula class followed by a birthday part y for Mina’s friend and then we needed to get home to nap before the circus tonight! So this meant we needed to eat somewhere quick, close and easy! Ogre’s suggestion: Taco Delite. He has been trying to get me to eat here for as long as I can remember and I think his request is usually met with silence. But since it was right there, right now, I said okay. So in we went. Read the rest of this entry »

The experience

Friday night. I like to get pizza on Friday nights. Don’t ask me why. Even when we weren’t doing this everyday, I like to go out for pizza once a week. Before we had Benji, we’d go to what was then Double Dave’s (now Chez Joey’s…but was Doughy Joey’s when Ogre reviewed it here! Phew!) every Monday night. Anyway, we decided on Sal’s in Plano. I’ve had delivered pizza from the one in Dallas when I worked at Children’s downtown so I knew it was pretty good.

We were seated right away and the kids immediately noted the paper on the tables hoping they would get some crayons. Sure enough, eagle-eyed Mina saw our waitress grabbing some crayons for them. They immediately went to town coloring…eventually scribbling over the entire table.

We ordered pizza pasta for the kids. Mina decided she wanted the pink sauce imagining it would be like the pink sauce she loves from Momo’s. She explicitly explained that she wanted it all mixed together (normally she wants in on the side to dip in).

We waited for our order and chatted while the kids colored. We had also ordered some garlic cheese bread and munched on that when it came out.

As soon as Ogre saw the pasta for the kids, he regretted not having the sauce on the side fearing the messy reprecutions. Oh well.

Our pizza came out next and we enjoyed the pizza very much. The kids loved the pasta and actually did not make too big of a mess!

Benji came over to get hugs and somehow wormed his way into my lap while I finished up dinner (he refused to sit with Papa).

The food

Pizza and Pasta.

We ordered the garlic cheese bread, which I would not recommend. It was definitely a garlicky bread, but it just had these round slices of provolone melted on top that did not stick very well to the bread.

We ordered a pizza with sausage, dun dried tomatoes, mushrooms and half olives. We liked the pizza pretty well. Their crust is hand tossed and nice and doughy but not chewy. Ingredients were definitely plentiful as well.

The kids had penne pasta with pink sauce (creamy tomato). If their devouring of the pasta was not evidence enough, Ogre and I both tried it and it was excellent. I’d order this for myself!

The service

Okay. Not awesome, but she did her job well enough. Food comes out nice and quick.

The kids

They let the kids color on the table cloths (well, paper) and they have a good little kids menu. Definitely kid friendly.

We liked the pizza here, not the best we’ve had, but it’s up there and the kid friendliness was a bonus!

About Child's Plate

Childsplate.com chronicles our journey to find the perfect family restaurant. We are looking for restaurants with excellent food and a great attitude towards kids, even the whiny, cranky ones! We will be headed out to a different restaurant every single day to provide ourselves (and you) with some entertainment and good information about DFW area restaurants. We hope you will visit frequently and use our experiences to create some fun dining experiences of your own! Watch out, DFW, the Phipps family is going out to eat!